


This is a Gift (It Comes With a Price)

by sequence_fairy



Series: Bunny Scarves [2]
Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, timeskip fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 13:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6612283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bunny scarves, and rainy nights alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is a Gift (It Comes With a Price)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion piece to [Rabbit Heart](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6559678).

Ichigo sits at his desk, shoulders hunched and fingers curled over the keyboard of his laptop. The application essay is not going to write itself, but he’s been staring at the blank page in front of him for hours. The cursor blinks accusingly at him. He lifts his hands and laces his fingers together before cracking his knuckles. He leans back in his chair, and turns to look out the window – the window that is always cracked and never locked – and watches the rain stream down the outside of the glass.   
  
It’s late, and he’s – there’s no other word for it – lonely. He picks up his phone, and finds his thumb hovering over the icon for the folder of pictures he’s saved. He doesn’t have many pictures of her, because they were too busy saving the world to take a lot of selfies, but he has a few. He closes his eyes and puts the phone down. There’s no need to get maudlin now, and besides, he has an essay to write.   
  
He goes back to the blank screen and stares at it some more. He starts typing and then deletes it all four times before giving up and closing the lid of the laptop. He grabs his phone and flops down onto his bed. He determinedly does not look at any pictures, and rolls over onto his stomach, absently scrolling through his twitter timeline before, after a brief internal argument, giving into temptation and opening the folder.   
  
He thumbs through the pictures, looking for one in particular. That day on the rooftop of the school – when she attacked him with a scarf and threw her arm around his neck to drag him down to her height and for a brief moment he could pretend that they weren’t facing actual hell on earth and were just two people, goofing off at lunch.   
  
He finds it quickly, and Ichigo is accomplished enough at lying to himself that he doesn’t question why it’s so easy to locate one picture among the thousands that have taken up residence on his phone. One picture from nearly a year ago, the exact date forgotten, but still, the knowledge of where exactly it lives on the hard drive of his phone is imprinted in his hands.   
  
It’s not a very good picture all things considered – Rukia’s too short to have managed to get him completely in the frame, and there’s the remnants of his angry flush on his face, but her eyes are bright and shining and she’s smiling with her whole mouth, not just the half-smile that he always wanted to turn into more. Her scarf – white with the outline of black rabbits jumping all over it – is bunched up around her neck, and his – black with solid white bunnies – is barely in the picture.   
  
The scarf now lives in the bottom of his sock drawer, buried under the wool socks he never wears because it never quite gets cold enough in Karakura to need them, and besides – he runs hot, has since she stabbed him and released him into the world.  He wonders if she still has hers. He’s not sure what she took with her back to the  _ Seireitei _ when she left, it didn’t seem like anything, but none of her things remained in his closet after she disappeared.   
  
Urahara might know, Ichigo decides, but then derails that train of thought before it can get any further. He doesn’t want to know what she left behind, doesn’t want to know what she decided was important enough to take with her and what wasn’t. He doesn’t want to think about a white scarf tucked into a forgotten box in a dusty corner of a shady shop in a backstreet of Karakura, instead of a white scarf folded carefully into a drawer in the Kuchiki house-hold in the  _ Seireitei _ or a white scarf wrapped around her neck, while she  _ shunpo _ ’s across the division yards running errands for Ukitake-taicho.     
  
He closes the photo app, drops his phone on his nightstand and rolls over onto his back. The wind rushes in through the gap in the window and Ichigo can smell rain and wet pavement. Another gust of wind rattles the blinds and makes his curtains flap and Ichigo comes to a decision. He sits up, then leans up on his knees, and closes the window. He can’t bring himself to lock it, but it’s closed. 

  
He falls asleep, lying on top of the blankets, only to shoot awake in the very early morning, and scramble to open the window again. The sky is clear now, and the moon hangs low in the sky, nearly faded by the dawn. The last stars are winking out on the horizon and from far away, Ichigo hears the whistle of the early train. 


End file.
